Tallinn's Black Nights Turns 30 With a Lineup of Offbeat Films
Tallinn's Black Nights Film Festival, known locally as PÖFF, opens its 30th anniversary edition on 6 November. It runs until 22 November 2026, and the festival says it will screen 230 feature films and 259 short films from 87 countries.
Among the titles, The Hollywood Reporter picked out several unusual-sounding films. Two of them will have their world premieres in Tallinn.
The first is Sinless, directed by Attila Hartung, who is screening it in the festival's main competition. Hartung co-wrote the film with Attila Veres, a horror novelist. Márk Nagy plays Henrik, and Anna Mészöly plays Anita, his girlfriend and the youngest daughter in the family. Hartung's first feature, FOMO, premiered at Tallinn in 2019.
The second is The Two Hornets, from the Slovakian director Dominik György. He wrote, directed and produced the film, his first feature as a solo director. It screens in the festival's Rebels With a Cause competition, and it runs 3 hours and 8 minutes. The picture is framed in a 1:1 square, the same shape Xavier Dolan used for Mommy, rather than the wide frame most cinemas show. According to the magazine, the film is a queer love and revenge thriller about Samo, a gay man who faces an unplanned pregnancy with a woman overseas.
Documentaries have their own threads. Fruitcakes: Dawn of Drag, a co-production between Finland and Denmark, is in the Doc@PÖFF International Competition. The festival's programme describes it with the line: "The freedom that the young take for granted has been achieved at someone else's expense." Doc@PÖFF has announced two competition programmes in total.
Special screenings include Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons, according to The Hollywood Reporter's earlier festival roundup. Tim Blake Nelson will also present his work at the festival, including The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd.
For anyone planning a visit or a watch-at-home list, the full programme is public and tickets are on sale, the festival said on its website. Festivals like this one matter for a practical reason. Sales agents and buyers attend to find films that may reach cinemas and streaming services a year or two later, so a premiere here can be the first step in a long journey to a screen.
